Yarn-bombing is a global craze which is much like graffiti for people who would not ordinarily break the rules.

It has reached Adelaide and popped up most recently in the hills town of Stirling.

Hundreds of school children, scouts, craft club members and individuals spent hours creating knitted and crocheted works to display outside the Coventry Library.

"I knew it would really spark the imagination of the community up here. I just knew it's the sort of thing our community would really enjoy, said children's librarian Jo Kaeding.

She helped organise the yarn-bombing display as part of the Adelaide Fringe festival.

"Having younger children myself, I know that they love craft and so all you need to do is show them how and they're on board," she said.

"I know at St Catherine's School they were having lunchtime yarn, finger-knitting sessions and at one point the teacher rang me up and she said 'What have you got me into? I have got 70 kids in the library at lunchtime, so yeah, they love it."

Ms Kaeding said yarn-bombing was part of a resurgence in handicrafts.

"Really big, especially crocheting is huge at the moment," she said.

Yarn-bombing, or guerrilla knitting as it also is known, also has turned up elsewhere across South Australia, recently on the Glenelg foreshore in Adelaide and last year in the Riverland town of Berri.

Across the border in New South Wales, Broken Hill's tourist attraction the Big Red Bench recently was partially covered with wool.

Yarn-bombing is thought to have started in the United States about a decade ago and spread globally.

Items ranging from statues to a bus have been adorned in wool.

There are now websites and books on yarn-bombing which even include knitting patterns.